The advance of computer and networking technologies has resulted in a significant increase in the number of people who conduct business and execute financial transactions online. For example, people are using personal computers connected to the Internet to perform online banking, purchase goods and services, and to conduct business generally. Many of the activities that people perform online include accessing or exchanging data that is of a confidential and private nature. Accordingly, to ensure the data remains confidential and private, enterprises that offer online services require systems and tools to protect their customer's data.
One of the most common schemes for protecting confidential and private data is the ubiquitous username and password scheme. For example, many enterprises require their customers to set up accounts by first establishing a unique username and password. Each time the customer would like to gain access to his private and confidential data, the customer is requested to verify his identity by entering his username and password. Consequently, to protect confidential and private data, the customer must take great care to protect his username and password from being discovered by others. If a user allows his username and password to fall into the wrong hands, often times other private data, such as credit card numbers and/or social security numbers, are easily compromised as well.
Unfortunately, the general increase in online activities has also seen an increase in the number of unscrupulous persons seeking to commit fraudulent activates online, particularly online identity theft. Naturally, the perpetrators of these crimes tend to target the most vulnerable, in this case, those with little experience and familiarity with the Internet and online enterprises.
One of the most common identity theft schemes involves the use of “spoof” web sites. A spoof web site is a web site that has purposefully been designed to imitate the web site of a more popular and legitimate enterprise. A perpetrator will often lead people to the spoof web site by mass mailing spoof emails. These deceptive emails will request that the recipient of the email respond by navigating to a spoof web site and provide personal information, such as his or her username and password. Once the perpetrators have the unsuspecting person's username and password, the perpetrators can use the username and password to gain access to that person's account at the legitimate web site that the spoof site is setup to imitate. Consequently, this type of scheme often targets financial web sites and large online retailers.